Weekend Warrior Training Plan

The Friday Workout The workday ends. The whistle blows, you slide down the dinosaur's tail and into your car, and the weekend has begun. Now squeeze in a workout before joining in the festivities.

Here's the plan:

6:00 p.m. Stretch.

6:05 Sweat. Do something aerobic for 20 minutes. Your options: Take a fast-paced walk; do some light jogging; go swimming; hop on a stationary bike, rower or stairclimber; jump rope. Or do any 20-minute combination of these. "It's not so much what you do," says Warren Anderson, M.S., C.S.C.S., owner of Rehab Plus in Phoenix, "it's that you do. Just do something."

6:25 Cool down. Walk around for a few minutes to bring down your heart rate.

6:30 Pump. It's time to move some iron. For your resistance workout, don't feel like you need a separate exercise for every tiny muscle in your body. By targeting the major muscle groups, the following program will hit almost every muscle to one degree or another. For each exercise, do two sets of 10 to 15 repetitions.

bench presses

leg presses or squats

lat pulldowns

dumbbell curls

back extensions or seated pulley rows

two sets of 15 crunches to work your abdominals

A word about weights: "If you haven't done any weight training during the week, you should stick to moderate weights on Friday and then go hard on Sunday," says Gary Hunter, Ph.D., director of the exercise physiology department at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. "On Friday, aim for about 80 percent of what you could lift if you went all out. In other words, if you know you can bench-press 100 pounds for two sets of 10, do both sets with 80 pounds on Friday and 100 pounds on Sunday." Why not go hard both days? "You don't want to stress totally unprepared muscles," says Wayne Campbell, Ph.D., exercise physiologist at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. Which brings us to this public-service message:

If you want to do aerobics, rake some leaves, wash your car or wallpaper your wife. Lay off the weights.

Sunday

Similar to Friday's workout, with two exceptions: First, try to do a different activity for your 20-minute aerobic workout. "I recommend doing different stuff both days so you don't overstress any one muscle group," says Campbell. "Then, there's no problem at all doing aerobics multiple times in the same weekend. The idea is to get a good workout without crippling yourself for Monday." Second, do the same strength routine, but use a little extra weight. Campbell recommends lifting as much as you can handle for two sets of 10 to 15 repetitions.

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